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And Finally ... Actions of the ICTU leader Begg the question: Why?

JUST why is David Begg, the grand panjandrum of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, threatening to bring down the 17-year-old edifice of social partnership to prevent Seamus Brennan modernising CIE and Aer Rianta? Begg, keeper of the conscience for the left, must be aware that actions should be proportionate to the grievances that cause them. So why is he threatening the country with industrial anarchy in order to protect the near-monopoly of bus workers in Dublin? To add to the mystery, we should point out that it’s a long time since the members of the National Bus and Railworkers’ Union paid any dibs to the congress.

Does Begg seriously imagine he can prevent bus deregulation in a city where cars have become a hunted species? Or perhaps Begg has been lured into becoming the latest proxy of Aer Rianta’s bureaucracy, which faces a Saddam-style erosion of its power bases